Photos of the Day 12/15

A woman helps another tie a green headband, a symbol of the Imam Hussein family, during a Shiite Ashura religious festival in Khorramabad, southwest of Tehran, Iran. Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters

Cadets stand in formation before an oath-taking ceremony at a cadet military school in Minsk, Belarus. About 150 of the first batch of cadets took part in the ceremony in Minsk's first newly opened cadet school. Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

Snow falls over the Bund, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Shanghai, China. AP Photo

A welder works on a Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carrier at BAE Systems Govan yard in Glasgow, Scotland. The $5.9 billion state-of-the-art carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales are due to enter service in 2014 and 2016 respectively. David Moir/Reuters

Members of the European Parliament vote during a session on the 2011 EU budget at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. Vincent Kessler/Reuters

A young monk holds a traditional parasol as he waits for the arrival of Tibet's exiled Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in Pemayangtse monastery in Pelling in India's Himalayan state of Sikkim. The Dalai Lama is in Sikkim, which borders China, as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao begins his three-day visit to New Delhi. Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters

Japanese monkeys bathe together in a pond filled with hot spring water at a municipal tropical botanical garden in Hakodate, Hokkaido, northern Japan, with temperature below freezing. The water temperature is kept at 106 degrees F. from December to May for about 100 monkeys living in the facilities. Hiroko Miyoshi/AP Photo

A Russian tourist prays at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, in Jerusalem's Old City. A leading Israeli rabbi has issued an ironic ruling to the faithful: the Western Wall is now off-limits on the Sabbath, Judaism's holiest day of the week. Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, a 100-year-old rabbinical authority widely revered among ultra-Orthodox Jews, says the closed-circuit surveillance cameras at the wall may protect visitors, but the technology desecrates the biblical commandment to refrain from work on the Sabbath. Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP Photo

A rainbow is seen at the Iguazu Falls on the border of Argentina's province of Misiones and Brazil's state of Parana. Enrique Marcarian/Reuters

A rare Philippine crocodile peers out of the water in its basin in the zoo of Zurich, Switzerland. Steffen Schmidt/AP Photo

Student Kate Messitidis looks up at her flag while waiting with fellow students outside Pinkerton Academey in Derry, N.H., for the funeral procession of marine Mike Geary, a 2009 graduate of Pinkerton Academy who was recently killed in Afghanistan. Cheryl Senter/AP Photo

A member of the Los Angeles Police Department Special Weapons And Tactics bomb squad, dressed as Santa Claus, and his helper, descend from a LAPD SWAT helicopter to deliver toys to more than 1,000 children at Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital in Los Angeles. Over 1,500 toys were donated from businesses and community supporters around the Southland. AP Photo

South Korean students look outside after they take shelter from a simulated North Korean attack during a civil defense drill near the Korean border city of Paju, South Korea. South Koreans stopped their cars, donned gas masks and ducked into underground shelters Wednesday in the country's biggest-ever evacuation drill, a government attempt to prepare traditionally indifferent citizens for possible new attacks by North Korea. Lee Jin-man/AP Photo

Supporters of Greece's Communist Party march in central Athens. Athens police fired tear gas at protesters who threw petrol bombs at two luxury hotels in the central Syntagma Square outside parliament on Wednesday as Greek protests against government austerity measures escalated. Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

Some of the 1,000 soldiers of the Somali Transitional Federal Government trained by Uganda and the European Union at their passing out parade, in Bihanga, Somalia. Vincent de Visscher, head of the EU delegation to Uganda, said that around 1,000 soldiers arrived in that country early in 2010 for training. Stephen Wandera/AP Photo

A Pakistani girl, Samha Javeed, plays an instrument while gathering with other children in an alley of a Christian neighborhood in Islamabad, Pakistan. Muhammed Muheisen/AP Photo

Helicopters fly over a corn field near Belle Glade, Fla., trying to save the crops by forcing warm air down to ground level. Lannis Waters/AP Photo

Assailed first by a debt crisis, then acting as a front line in Europe’s migrant crisis, Greece has had an extremely difficult few years. Yet it has avoided civil conflict and has remained in the eurozone, contrary to many expectations.